


till one day they call your name

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Theatre, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21770008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: “You know how when you’re little, people make you feel like you’ve been chosen for something great? And then one day it’s like it all vanished when you weren’t looking. Like you’ve disappointed them, somehow.”Nine years after almost causing the end of the world, Adam is working backstage in university theatre when he meets a high-strung, melodramatic, manipulative American director who happens to share his birthday.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Pepper & Adam Young (Good Omens), Warlock Dowling & Adam Young, Warlock Dowling/Adam Young
Comments: 73
Kudos: 614
Collections: Very Good Omens





	till one day they call your name

“Hey, can we get some light down here?”

Up in the tech box, Adam shut his book with a sigh. Dog, nestled in a corner in a coil of humming cables, perked up; Adam shushed him with a raised eyebrow and stood up to see who was making all the fuss.

It was the new director, the American. They didn’t get a lot of Americans in the drama society; this one must be on exchange or something. Clearly he had some sort of British fetish though, putting on The Importance Of Being Earnest in the middle of season, of all things. Adam stuck his head out of the window and snapped: “What?”

The director shaded his hand against the light, of which there was _plenty_ , and squinted at Adam in the box. “I need a couple of spotlights on Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble.”

Adam cast a glance over the rig. “Haven’t got profiles for that.”

“Well, can’t you put some up?”

“Rig’s full,” said Adam. “I’m not a bloody miracle worker.” He was, but the drama society didn’t need to know that.

Adam had wandered into working backstage at the university theatre, as he did most things, through serendipity. He had been behind the scenes of the workings of the world and was reminded of that, if only slightly, by the dusty labyrinth that was backstage. He liked the rest of the crew, who were sensible if put-upon, and he also liked set-building. Nothing said “Antichrist with a rebellious streak” like a spot of carpentry.

The Importance Of Being Earnest was not his show. Mischa, the actual production manager, had asked him to cover this rehearsal at the last minute so she could rush an assignment. “Don’t mind the director,” she’d said, giving him a harried one-armed hug, the other balancing a stack of books on library information systems. “He had us paint the floor black and white like a chessboard, now that was a bloody nightmare.”

The director swept his too-long fringe out of his eyes and gazed up at Adam. Something happened then. Adam could not quite put his finger on it. It was like he was being compelled to do something. Of course, Adam being Adam, it washed off him like water off a duck’s back. But now he was intrigued. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and went to get the ladder.

He made a show out of refocussing the front rig. The cast, bored by the proceedings, lolled about onstage. Miss Prism, the governess, looked like a Gothic Mary Poppins and was wearing dark glasses indoors. Dr Chasuble, furiously bearded, was in what looked like a giant white nightgown. Adam glanced down at the person responsible for these bizarre costume choices and found the director staring up at him, chin propped on his hands, watching him work with undisguised and unsettling fascination.

“Don’t the lights get hot?” he asked.

Adam realised he had forgotten to wear work gloves again. “Yeah,” he said diffidently. “You get used to it.”

The director got up as Adam descended the ladder and came over, hand outstretched. “I don’t think we were properly introduced before the rehearsal started. I’m Warlock.”

Adam felt for his aura, the way he had seen Anathema do. It was flickering and jittery bright, but this didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. He stuck his own hand out. “Adam.”

Warlock took his hand and promptly winced. “Jesus, that’s hot!”

“Eh,” said Adam, and went back upstairs. He put up the lights on the front rig. “That enough spotlight for you?”

“Yeah,” said Warlock, not looking at the lights.

“Okay then,” said Adam.

The silence in the theatre stretched on for a little too long. The cast shifted uneasily onstage. Warlock broke it by clapping and saying, brightly, “All right, from the top! Miss Prism, ‘You are too much alone, dear Dr Chasuble,’ if you please.”

Adam settled back down with his book - it was A Brief History Of Time - but did not read it. For a change, he watched the play. Dog nosed fretfully at his ankle and then went off to harass the rats in the workshop.

After the rehearsal was over and the last of the cast had filed out, he went down to tidy up. The black and white squares on the stage had got scuffed by the actors’ shoes and he thought he would paint them over again, to give Mischa a nice surprise before she came in for the dress tomorrow. He knelt down and put his hands out, one on a black square and one on a white, held the colours he wanted in his mind and transferred them. 

When he opened his eyes, the squares were fresh and crisp as if he’d gone over their edges with a fine brush. 

“How’d you do that?”

Adam turned. It was Warlock at the auditorium door, leaning on the frame in his leather jacket and watching him.

“Forget something?” said Adam sharply.

“My notes,” said Warlock, holding them up. “The paint trick. How’d you do that?”

Adam considered removing Warlock’s memory of the last minute. He tried to avoid doing that nowadays, Pepper said it was cheating, you couldn’t Ctrl-Z life. Explaining this to the American in drama soc would be inconvenient, to say the least. But some part of him had perked up at the challenge, like Dog to a whistle.

“‘S nothing,” he said. “Any good stage manager can do it.”

He felt it again, that compelling. This time, he traced it in the air and caught it in its invisible curls. Warlock choked.

“Who taught you that?” Adam let him go. “And don’t try it again, it doesn’t work on me.”

Warlock regained his composure and leaned again on the doorframe, faking casualness. “Learnt it when I was growing up.”

“From?”

Warlock shrugged. “Just this woman who raised me. My nanny. Said I’d need to do that sort of thing some day.”

“Sounds like a strange thing to teach a child.”

“I had a pretty weird childhood,” said Warlock. “You?”

Adam thought back to the events of his eleventh birthday. “My childhood,” he said, “was all right. Mostly.”

“Mostly,” repeated Warlock.

“Mostly,” agreed Adam.

At this point, Dog came loping through the door, having asserted his reign of terror over the rats of the theatre. He made to go to Adam, but then stopped, curious, to look at Warlock -

\- who stared back in unabashed delight. “Is he yours?”

“What?” Now Adam was taken aback. Most people at the university could not see Dog. Adam took him to lectures, to the library, backstage at the theatre, and nobody paid him any attention. 

Warlock knelt to offer his hand to Dog, who regarded it warily, then gave it a cautious sniff. “I always wanted a dog,” he told Adam. “My parents never let me. We were always moving around. What’s his name?”

“Dog,” said Adam.

Warlock snorted. “Dog?”

“Saves a lot of trouble, a name like that,” said Adam, miffed. “Bet you’d have named him something ridiculous.”

“Why, because of my own name?”

Adam lifted an eyebrow.

“We can’t help what we’re named,” said Warlock, a little coldly. He stood. Dog loped over to Adam and sat by his feet.

“No,” said Adam quietly. “We can’t.”

Warlock shifted his feet, suddenly self-conscious. “I should - I should go. The cast are having drinks at the Union, if you’d like to come.”

“Nah,” said Adam. “Think I’ll just finish up here. Thanks, though.”

“Okay,” said Warlock. “But I think we should see each other around, Adam Young.” He let Adam’s last name hang in the air as he swung abruptly out of the auditorium in a flare of leather jacket.

“Huh,” said Adam to Dog, who sniffed in response.

*

“I met someone, I think,” said Adam when he got back to the flat that night.

“Oh?” Pepper looked up from where she was buried in readings on Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler on the couch. She did gender studies, and studied it very loudly in their direction whenever they were around. “Like a someone-someone?”

“A someone we should look into,” said Adam. “He saw Dog. Where’s Wensley?” 

“At the library for project work. Has something to do with ‘forensic accounting’ - he tried to tell me about it but I said on no account was he to persist. He left you a portion in the fridge. Where’d you meet this someone?”

“Theatre.” Adam opened the fridge, where Wensleydale had left him stew in a tupperware with a passive-aggressive note about doing the dishes. Wensley was a better flatmate than they all deserved. “He’s directing the drama show. American called Warlock.” 

Pepper scoffed. “Did you name him?”

“What?”

Pepper pointed at Dog. “You named your dog Dog. Your Warlock’s a warlock, clearly.”

“He’s not my Warlock,” said Adam. “He can compel people to do his bidding. Think I’d better ask Anathema about it.”

“I want to meet him,” said Pepper. “If I’m to be single and unloved at 30, I want to know it was for a good cause.”

When they were 15, Pepper and Adam had made a pact, half in jest, that if they were both still single at 30, they would get married. It could still happen, Adam thought ruefully, if they kept on the way they did. 

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy.” Adam dug a spoon into the stew, which began heating up of its own accord. 

“No?” Pepper spun her laptop around. She had somehow, through her own modern witchcraft, already found Warlock on Facebook and opened his profile photo. “Shades and leather? Looks like the bad boy type to me.”

“I am the Antichrist,” mumbled Adam. “There is more than enough ‘bad boy type’ to go around.”

“Well, I think anyone who calls themselves Warlock is bound to be a bit of a twat.”

“Right you are, Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.”

Pepper threw her laptop at him. Adam barely managed to get the stew out of the way.

If he glanced at Warlock’s profile and saw that they had the exact same birth date, it was a complete coincidence. 

“I’m thinking of dropping by Soho later this week,” was what he said out loud. “Want to come along?”

“To harass your un-godparents?” Pepper flipped a page loftily. “By all means.”

*

Adam was not sure what exactly it was Crowley and Aziraphale did any more. Neither of them had reported to their respective superiors for years. They were practically freelancers, insofar as the gig economy for ethereal beings extended to hanging about on Earth making sure the Antichrist didn’t get up to anything too exciting. 

For most of his teenage years, he hadn’t even thought about them very much. The whole Armageddidn’t business was a bit embarrassing, really, so he had spent quite a bit of time trying to distance himself from all that. That included the angel and demon in London, which was so far away in any case that it might as well be Timbuktu.

All this changed when his friends decided they needed higher education.

Or, Pepper and Wensleydale did. Brian had finagled himself a place on a minor football league, which meant he spent most of the season on the road or in training. Adam had been alarmed by this - alarmed by the notion that everyone suddenly wanted to leave him again. Adam did not want to leave Tadfield. Left to his own devices, he would probably have stayed there forever, ageing slowly into the land like a tree. But Wensleydale wanted to crunch a lot of numbers and Pepper wanted to be “the British bell hooks”, so Adam found himself trailing after them through the streets of London on university open day, laden with prospectuses and flyers. There was an obscene amount of people. Adam wondered how they could all stand to breathe. With his friends caught up in new circles talking excitedly about curricula, Adam found himself drifting away, across the campus, out through the gates, down the street, one foot after another until he found himself somehow in Soho.

He had never laid eyes upon A. Z. Fell & Co in his life - he had fixed a lot without knowing the first thing about any of it - but he knew at once that this was the shop. Aziraphale was behind the counter with a mug of cocoa. “We’re closed,” he said sharply as Adam entered, and then, eyes widening, “Why, _Adam_ , it’s you - ”

Crowley came over shortly afterwards. He had changed his hair again and it was now artfully tousled in a way that demanded either copious amounts of aerosol or a minor miracle. He took one look at Adam, ensconced in Aziraphale’s poofiest armchair, and said, “That boy needs a drink.”

“Is he old enough?” whispered Aziraphale. “I can never remember at what age they’re supposed to start imbibing. So terribly fiddly when you get to these small increments.”

“I can hear you,” said Adam from the armchair. “And yes, I can legally drink alcohol, not that anybody asked me if I was old enough when they wanted me to do stuff like face down Satan, oh no.”

Crowley came into view. In his hand was a glass of something rich and golden, the colour of his eyes. “A pity,” he drawled. “I do so enjoy tempting minors.”

Adam tried to down it in one and failed. While he coughed violently, Crowley pulled up an ottoman, slung a long, lean leg over it and asked casually: “What gives?”

And Adam, to his consternation, found himself spilling all of it. How it had started with Brian getting the offer. The university open day. He did not speak of that day in Hogback Wood, but it was there in his mind: the three of them sitting on the log, the rictuses of their smiles. _Come back. I command you._

“I don’t want them to leave me,” he told his knees. “But I can’t _make_ them stay. That was - that was how it started, the last time.”

Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a look. There was a lot in it - Adam remembered this about them, the way they communicated sometimes through looks that spoke enough volumes to fill Aziraphale’s shop. It was Aziraphale who said: “But Adam, dear boy, what do _you_ want to do?”

“Me?”

“Don’t you want to go to university?” Aziraphale went on. “Or a vocation of sorts - what did you have in mind?”

“I dunno.” Adam swung the ice around in his glass. “I guess I want to save the world. I just don’t know how to go about it, seeing as how I bollocksed it up the last time.”

“Well,” said Aziraphale, “one can always learn about these things. University seems like a good place to start. The one your friends have picked out isn’t half bad.”

“But what would I study?”

Aziraphale beamed at him. “Whatever you like, dear boy. Whatever you like.”

  
  


*

If you pointed out Adam Young to any lecturer at this university, odds were that they would vaguely recognise him, and then just as quickly forget him. 

Adam went for whatever lectures he felt like. He liked stuff on Geography and Environmental Studies, he had found, although he mixed it up with Economics, History and Sociology and some days he even sat in on Molecular Cell Division or Viking Battle Poetry for a lark. Dog went with him to all the lectures. Nobody paid them any heed.

Today, he had wandered into a Shakespeare lecture. It had taken a long time for Adam to get into Shakespeare, but Aziraphale quoted it on the regular, so much so that he had decided to give it a go himself. He liked The Tempest, but thought Cymbeline had a rubbish plot. 

The lecture hall was packed. Adam sat down on the steps, Dog curled up between his feet. The lecturer had just launched into a spirited analysis of Hal versus Hotspur in Henry IV Part I, when Adam heard someone go “Psst.”

It turned out to be Warlock, who had scored the seat nearest the aisle and was now leaning down from the bench, grinning. His fringe was hanging in his eyes. Adam resisted the urge to reach up and fix it.

“What are you doing here?” Warlock whispered, not quite sotto voce. “Is this your course?”

“No,” said Adam. “Is it yours?”

“Nope,” replied Warlock cheerfully. “International relations, me, as prescribed by dear old Dad. I just think Shakespeare’s awesome.” He mouthed along with the lecturer: “... _and think not, Percy, to share with me in glory any more: Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere_.” 

“Reckon they could do,” mused Adam. “Keep their motion, that is, if they just dialled back their egos.”

“But where’s the dramatic tension in that?” Warlock reached down to greet Dog. “They let you take your dog to lectures?”

Adam glanced around, uncomfortable. “Shut up, nobody’s meant to see him.”

Warlock did a double-take. “They’re not?”

“Yeah, you’re special, all right? Now keep it down.”

Warlock kept it together for all of two minutes before he leaned down again and remarked: “Haven’t seen you at rehearsals.”

“Because I’m not working on your show. I was just standing in for Mischa.”

“But you could if you wanted to.”

“I could,” said Adam. “Bit busy though.”

“Doing what?” Warlock propped his chin on his hands, bringing his face closer to Adam’s level. “I asked around about you, Adam Young. You’re everywhere, but nobody seems to know where you come from or what course you take. Nobody even seems to have wondered. Now why is that?”

“Maybe it’s not any of their business,” said Adam. “Maybe you’re reading too much into this, because you’ve never met anybody immune to your charms.”

“Are you?” Warlock looked at him. “Immune to my charms.”

“You know what,” said Adam, too casually, “I’ve got something on, just realised, got to go do life stuff. Enjoy Shakespeare.” Then he got up and sauntered up the steps, his brain flashing _Exit! Exit!_ like a siren, feeling Warlock’s gaze upon the back of his neck. Outside the lecture theatre, he stopped to regard the uncharacteristic hammering of his heart.

“I think we pulled that off, don’t you?” he remarked to Dog. 

Dog peered up at him, then scratched matter-of-factly behind his ears with a paw.

*

Adam never told Aziraphale when they were coming by the bookshop, but somehow he was always ready for them, and so was Crowley, lurking amid the shelves or sprawled on the sofa texting.

“Brought you cupcakes,” said Adam by way of greeting. “From that Hummingbird place you like up the road.”

“Why, these look scrumptious.” Aziraphale received them with delight. “Is that red velvet?”

“You spoil him,” said Crowley from the sofa, which, as everyone in the room knew, was a hypocritical pronouncement.

Adam had always had the sneaking feeling that Aziraphale was not very good with children and much preferred him as an adult. He did not begrudge the angel this. He would not have wanted much truck with himself as a child.

“Aziraphale,” said Pepper, already deep in the shelves, “why are all your books still by and about SPMs?”

“S what, my dear?”

Pepper stuck her head out. “Stale pale males.”

Aziraphale gaped at her. “She’s right, you know,” said Crowley, deriving altogether too much glee from this conversation. “Very pale, very male, and oh so very stale.”

Aziraphale opened and shut his mouth and eventually managed: “Well, perhaps you ought to help me do some curation, young lady.”

“I would be delighted to,” said Pepper munificently.

Aziraphale thus distracted by cream cheese icing and decolonising the stocklist, Adam settled down in the armchair by Crowley.

“Everything all right at school?” Crowley inquired. “Not blown the world up yet, have you?”

“‘S all right,” allowed Adam. “I think I might have a boy problem, though.”

Crowley digested this, then took off his shades and fixed Adam with a look.

“And you think _I’m_ the one to help you with that?”

“Well,” said Adam, “Pepper just keeps laughing at me, Wensley’s not remotely interested, Brian is - really very straight - and I figured you’d know a bit about that sort of thing. Because.” He waved vaguely at the bookshop.

“Well, have you got a spare six thousand years to moon about in?” demanded Crowley. “Because I don’t recommend it, and in any case you had better hop to it before this human of yours shuffles off the mortal coil. It _is_ a human, yes?”

“Think so.”

“What’s he like then?”

Adam shrugged non-committally. “Melodramatic. Wears leather. Asks a lot of questions.”

“So what’s the matter?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Does he not like you back? Is he allergic to feelings? Is he, like Brian, ‘really very straight’?”

“...no,” said Adam. “But he might be an occult practitioner.”

_To my knowledge, this is not witchcraft,_ Anathema had replied to his e-mail that morning. She was currently traversing the West Coast of America, Newt and the twins in tow, on what seemed to be an extended TedEx tour for witches. The twins, in keeping with family traditions on both sides, had been given the bizarre and hard-to-pronounce names of Chiasmus and Zeugma Device. They were only five years old and Adam was already unnerved by them. 

_It does, however, sound very much like a demonic capability_ , Anathema went on. _Which is perhaps something you should ask our mutual friend about._

Crowley listened intently through Adam’s description of the compelling. “It sounds an awful lot like temptation,” he concluded. “Just used with flagrant abandon. No flair in that. You sure he’s not a demon?”

“I think I would have noticed.”

“A human who can tempt,” mused Crowley. “Wonder which idiot demon taught him that one.”

“It doesn’t work on me,” said Adam. “Obviously.”

Crowley’s mouth crooked at the corner. “But still you’re interested.”

“Dunno,” said Adam. “Maybe. Yes. I think. How do you tell?”

Crowley snorted. “It’s usually flamingly obvious. Like a great bloody flaming sword that somebody tells you they’ve gone and given away because they were worried about some poor humans in the wilderness, rules be damned, and then there’s you going, ‘Ah, fuck it.’”

“What’s that?” Aziraphale had wandered back into earshot, bearing a notebook thick with scribbles and a harried expression, as people were wont to do in Pepper’s presence. Pepper trailed him, looking smug.

“Nothing,” said Crowley. “Just holding forth to young Adam here on how too much love can kill you, just the same as none at all, as the good Freddie Mercury would say.”

“Freddie who?” said Adam.

“Who raised this child?” Crowley spread his arms in faux exasperation. “Not me, that’s for certain.”

“What happened to the one that you did raise, then?” Adam asked. “Instead of me?”

“Blessed if we know,” said Crowley. “Made a hash out of that one, we did. Probably up to his ears in therapy now.”

“Oh, I rather think we did all right,” put in Aziraphale soothingly. “I daresay we were rather good at being godparents.”

“You tried to kill me,” Adam pointed out. “Literally the first thing you did when we met.”

Aziraphale had the grace to look embarrassed. 

“Like I said.” Crowley was gazing into the middle distance. If he looked a little misty around the pupils, nobody made mention of it. “Probably for the best he’s well out of it now.”

*

Adam sat in on a lecture on European free trade and a seminar on urban planning, then decided he would go into the theatre workshop to do a spot of tidying. Dog went off into the wood store to look for rats. Adam was sitting on the floor, sorting the lighting gels by colour, when Mischa burst in. She looked as if she was warring with herself as to what to say; she opened her mouth and shut it a couple of times. Adam waited. Finally Mischa said: “That Warlock Dowling wants to know if you can op his show.”

“Isn’t Simon doing it?”

“That’s what I said.” Mischa threw up her hands in exasperation. “I mean, yes, Simon’s fresh blood and we all know it’d go a sight better if you did it, but no director is going to come in and tell me how to pick and choose _my_ crew. So I told him to fuck off, and then he said just to ask you, and I - ”

“ - felt like you couldn’t say no,” finished Adam. 

“Sorry,” said Mischa, whom Adam had known to drive many a producer to tears by describing their inefficiency to them in exacting detail. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s all right.” Adam got up. “I’ll talk to him.”

Warlock was on the stage, arguing furiously with the actor playing Lady Bracknell. Adam watched him from the wings for a while, and then he stepped onstage, drew the shadows around him and spoke in his Adversary-Destroyer-of-Kings voice: “ **Warlock Dowling**.”

Warlock’s head snapped towards him. Then he glanced curiously around as everyone else in the theatre continued to go about their business as if nothing was happening.

“ **Follow me** ,” said Adam, turned on his heel and walked out. He went up the stairs to the sliver of roof where the set-builders did their spray-painting. He turned in time to see Warlock come stumbling up the stairs after him. “Adam,” he began, “wh - ”

Adam made a fist and pulled it back. Warlock flew towards him like a puppet on strings, stopping mere inches from his nose, stunned.

“Not very nice, is it,” said Adam conversationally in his normal voice. “Being yanked about against your will.”

Warlock simply gaped at him.

“You’re not going to compel anyone else,” said Adam. “Not my people, not yours. You’re going to stop using that power on others who can’t defend against it.”

“Like you do?”

Adam stared at him.

“I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t actually want to do,” Warlock went on. “When I came out to my dad, I tried to make him accept it. And it worked for a while, but it was really draining to keep it up. It was like he couldn’t be who he was if I wanted him to like who I was. So I gave it up, and I decided I had to get out of America.”

“Oh,” said Adam.

“Sometimes I think the power is the only thing that makes me special,” said Warlock. “You know how when you’re little, people make you feel like you’ve been chosen for something great? And then one day it’s like it all vanished when you weren’t looking. Like you’ve disappointed them, somehow.”

“Nah,” said Adam. “A bit of the opposite, really. Except for the part about disappointing them, I think I managed that all right.”

Warlock laughed. “I don’t think you could disappoint anybody, Adam Young.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“No,” said Warlock. “ _You_ are special. In the way I’ve always tried to be. You still haven’t told me where the hell you’re from.”

“It’s funny you should put it like that,” began Adam, and then Warlock kissed him.

It didn’t go all that smoothly. Their noses bumped, their teeth clacked. But then Warlock did something with his tongue that Adam felt all the way down his spine and every light bulb in the theatre shattered and reformed from shards in the space of a millisecond.

It was Warlock who broke the kiss to draw breath. Adam had forgotten completely about breathing.

“So,” Warlock’s breath ghosted over his ear, “who are you, really?”

“I’m the Antichrist,” said Adam.

Warlock didn’t say anything for a while, and then he stilled, hands tangled in the front of Adam’s hoodie. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope,” said Adam. “It’s me, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, et cetera. Hi.”

“Okay,” said Warlock. And then, after a beat, “That explains a lot.”

“Reckon it does.” Adam watched him. “You’re taking it rather well.”

“I’m not sure if I shouldn’t be disturbed at how well I’m taking it,” said Warlock, “but I did have that very weird childhood.”

“About that,” began Adam.

“Oh, shit,” exclaimed Warlock suddenly. “Dress rehearsal. I completely forgot we were in the middle of the dress.”

“You know I can stop time, if you like.”

“Oh god,” said Warlock. “Not on my account. You can save the freezing of time for the second date.”

“Is _this_ a date?”

“Yes? No? I don’t know?” Warlock ran his hands through his hair distractedly. “I’m sorry, it’s a lot, my boyfriend is the Antichrist and my play is tonight and I’m only freaking out about one of these and I don’t know what that says about me.”

“Did I say I was your boyfriend?”

“Did _I_ say you were my boyfriend?” Warlock put his hand over his mouth. “I did, didn’t I. Um. That’s awkward.”

“I don’t mind,” said Adam.

“Okay,” said Warlock. “Cool. Great. Now I’m going to remove myself and have a nervous breakdown downstairs.”

Adam reached out and caught him by the collar again, reeled him in. Their second kiss was slower, much smoother. Adam found himself carding his fingers through Warlock’s hair, tucking his wayward fringe behind his ear like he’d been wanting to do for longer than he cared to admit.

“Come to my show,” said Warlock against his mouth.

“I’m still not working on your show.”

“You don’t have to.” Warlock pulled away slightly, so that he could look Adam in the eye. “But I would very much like for you to come see it. As my guest.”

“Okay,” said Adam. “Okay.”

And then, as a thought struck him, “Could I get a couple more tickets?”

*

“An evening at the theatre?” Aziraphale was thrilled. “What a capital idea. I do love a bit of Wilde.”

Crowley scoffed. “‘Course you would, the way you carried on back then.”

“Now, now. I know you didn’t like the fellow - ”

“Always making eyes at you, he was. Offering _cucumber sandwiches_.”

“They were perfectly good cucumber sandwiches, I’ll have you know.”

Crowley made a face. “At least it’s student theatre. There’s some joy to be had in watching them butcher it, I’m sure.”

Crowley and Aziraphale always turned heads at the theatre, Aziraphale because he looked like he belonged in the cast and people suspected him of being an audience plant, and Crowley because he was wearing shades in a theatre.

Crowley spent the first act snorting every time somebody mentioned “cucumber” and being elbowed in the ribs by Aziraphale. By the second act, however, he quieted when he saw Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble. Adam saw him exchange a look with Aziraphale, who wordlessly handed him the programme. Crowley flipped to the page with the director’s note and examined it, because of course he could read in the dark. 

When the house lights came up for the interval, neither of them made to get up. People began pushing past them irritably.

“Adam,” said Crowley, deceptively calm, “what in heaven are you playing at?”

“Dunno,” said Adam innocently. “Anything you recognise?”

Crowley swore under his breath. “It was me, wasn’t it? I’m the idiot demon.”

“Hang on,” began Aziraphale, “you don’t mean to say - ”

“It’s our Warlock,” hissed Crowley.

“I can see that.”

“He has demonic powers now.”

“No,” gasped Aziraphale.

Crowley jabbed a finger at Warlock’s bio photo and then in Adam’s direction. “Adam fancies him.”

“Actually,” said Adam modestly, “we’re dating now. Apparently.”

“Well, that escalated quickly,” said Crowley. “You’re lucky he learnt his sense of speed from me, not the angel.”

“You should come by backstage after the show,” Adam went on. “Say hello.”

“No.”

“Oh, why not, Crowley? It can’t do any harm to see the boy.”

“You weren’t there,” hissed Crowley. “He didn’t want us to leave. He didn’t want _me_ to - ” He broke off.

“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale took his hand. “You never said.”

“Because we were talking about _killing him_.”

“Right. There was that.”

The bell rang.

Crowley and Aziraphale suffered stoically through two more acts of The Importance Of Being Earnest and then Crowley tried to leave with the rest of the crowd but they found themselves turning the corner towards the stage door instead. Crowley bit off invective. 

Backstage was chaos as it usually was after a show ended, as the actors got euphorically hysterical from pent-up nerves and the stagehands tried mournfully to locate all the props in the madness. Crowley watched judgmentally as the actor playing Miss Prism walked into the prompt desk, swore and took off his shades. “Can’t see in these fucking things,” he told an unimpressed Mischa. 

Warlock was in the midst of it all, arms looped around the shoulders of the actors playing Algernon and Ernest, trying to give notes but mostly just hugging people. 

“Look, he’s busy,” began Crowley, turning to go, but Adam called: “Warlock.” 

Warlock turned at the sound of his voice and his face lit up when he saw Adam, who tried not to levitate everything backstage at that because Mischa would kill him.

He was halfway across the stage when he saw who was standing behind Adam and froze.

Aziraphale gave a tentative wave. “Warlock, do you remember us?”

“I - yes.” Warlock took another step forward. He stared at Crowley, then Aziraphale, then Crowley again. 

“Nanny,” he said after a while, “you’re a man.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” began Crowley, and then, in an aside to Aziraphale, “Too much information?”

Aziraphale made an aborted hand gesture that could really have meant anything.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Warlock.

“They’re with me,” said Adam.

“Do they know you’re the,” Warlock whispered, “the, you know.”

“I think there’s something we need to show you, Warlock,” said Crowley. In an aside to Adam, “Can you - ”

Adam blinked, and the four of them were on the roof.

Warlock stumbled slightly and caught Adam’s elbow. 

“Is it clear?” Crowley asked Aziraphale, who nodded, and then they both made a motion as if shrugging off a jacket. Two pairs of wings, one black and one white, unfurled in the night air.

“Oh my god,” said Warlock.

“Best not get Her involved,” said Crowley.

Warlock’s eyes flicked from the wings to Adam and back to the wings, realisation dawning. “You thought _I_ was the Antichrist. _That’s_ why you were looking after me. _That’s_ why you told me all those things.”

“Yes, dear boy,” said Aziraphale.

“But I was the wrong one,” Warlock went on. “I wasn’t the one you wanted after all.”

His voice shook. Crowley winched his wings back in and came over to Warlock. He took off his shades, let Warlock see his eyes.

“None of that, now,” he said in a voice Adam had not heard from him before, but which Warlock seemed to respond to subconsciously, his spine straightening, his breath deepening.

“I thought you left me because I wasn’t good enough,” he said.

“Of course you weren’t _good_.” Crowley gave him a crooked smile. “I raised you to raise hell, didn’t I?”

Warlock gave a half-sob, half-chuckle.

“I heard you trolled Hastur on the fields of Megiddo,” Crowley added. “He said you told him he smelled like poo.”

“I probably did,” said Warlock. “I was a little shit back then.”

“So proud,” said Crowley. “Bit distracted at the time, what with him threatening to kill me and all, but I do remember thinking, ‘That’s my boy.’”

Warlock glanced over at Aziraphale, who was beaming at him. “Are you and Brother Francis...together?”

“Aziraphale, you mean,” said Crowley. “Yes. I think you could say that.”

“Oh,” said Warlock. “That’s nice. I wish I’d known. It would have been nice to know.”

“My dear, I don’t think we quite knew ourselves at the time,” said Aziraphale. “Now, of course, it seems painfully obvious what a lot of time we wasted. I’m glad the two of you aren’t following our example.”

Warlock was blushing horribly. Adam tried to pretend he was not doing the same.

“And I for one am delighted that you have gone into theatre,” Aziraphale went on, clasping his hands as Crowley rolled his eyes. “I daren’t presume that any of my early presence had an influence on that, but Wilde! A superb choice. Now, tell me about your artistic decision to have an all-male cast…” He led Warlock off the roof.

Crowley fixed Adam with a look. Adam held it. Crowley relented. “Thank you.”

Adam shrugged.

“For what it’s worth,” Crowley added. “I was glad it wasn’t him in the end. And I’m glad that when it was you, you turned out the way you did. And we had absolutely nothing to do with either of those things, and I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am that we fucked that up.”

“You’re welcome,” said Adam.

“Right,” said Crowley, putting his shades back on. “I need a drink. You’re buying, Antichrist.”

*

“This him?” was Brian’s opening.

Warlock was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the picnic mat, trying to appear insouciant under the gazes of the rest of the Them.

“Yep,” said Pepper, popping her ‘p’s.

“Don’t look like much,” went on Brian. “Reckon I could take him.”

“Brian,” said Pepper severely. “We’ve talked about your male posturing and the culture of toxic masculinity.”

“Right,” said Brian, chastised. “Sorry, Pep.”

“Thank you,” said Warlock.

“And _you_.” Pepper turned on him. “If you hurt Adam, I’ll kill you.”

“Yeah,” put in Brian. “Me too.”

“Murder is not my forte,” Wensley piped up, pushing up his spectacles, “but I think I would be quite an asset in getting rid of a body, so there’s that.”

“He’s the Antichrist,” said Warlock, nonplussed. “Pretty sure he doesn’t need the help.”

“Oh, but he’s daft sometimes,” said Pepper. “Trust me. We know all about _that_.”

“Do you get a title, then?” Brian wanted to know. “On account of Adam having that awfully long one.”

“Adversary-Consort,” hazarded Wensley. “First Boyfriend of the Apocalypse.”

“How do you manage to make everything sound excruciating?” drawled Crowley. He was lying sprawled on the mat, basking in the uncharacteristic November sun. Next to him, Aziraphale had somehow produced an entire Victoria sponge cake out of nowhere and was cutting it fastidiously into slices. Dog chased a squirrel across the grass and up a tree, barking furiously.

“I’ve never seen it this sunny at this time of year,” remarked Warlock. 

“Adam hasn’t been out much lately, till now,” said Wensley. “You’ll see.”

“Seriously?” Warlock shot Adam a look. Adam shrugged. Warlock squinted up into the sun. 

Crowley pulled a spare pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Warlock. “Thanks,” said Warlock, putting them on. 

Adam watched him with an odd, flopping feeling in his chest, a dangerous kind of feeling. When you could burn down the world, it was never a good idea to keep around somebody for whom you would burn down the world for. But it was a bit late for that.

The afternoon waxed crisp as an apple. Adam shut his eyes, let it hang golden as summer, one breath before the creeping winter. He felt Warlock’s fingers tangle with his. 

**Author's Note:**

> Me writing futurefic: what is the world like in nine years' time? what do phones look like? is social media still a thing? did Brexit happen?  
> Also me: screw this it's exactly like 2019 except Crowley has different hair
> 
> Title from Hammer To Fall by Queen


End file.
